


A Weapon Forged in Anger

by Mithen



Series: Slumbers Deep and Dreams of Gold [8]
Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Conversation, Forging, Friendship/Love, M/M, Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 21:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/691871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Laketown, Thorin forges a new weapon for himself to replace the sword that the elves took from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Weapon Forged in Anger

**Author's Note:**

> In the book, Thranduil takes Orcrist from Thorin. I doubt that'll happen in the movies (it's just too awesome a design to give up!) but if it did...

_Clang!_

Thorin Oakenshield brought the hammer crashing down as if what he struck was not red-hot steel, but the invincible scales of Smaug.

_Clang!_

Not steel, but the disdainful face of the Elvenking, turning away.

_Clang!_

Not steel, but every year of exile, every day spent living by the sweat of his brow, selling his skill to men who sneered and gave him scant coin in return.

_Clang!_

Not steel, but the scarred face of Azog the Defiler, mocking his helplessness.

_Clang!_

His muscles screamed with fatigue and sweat stung his eyes. Sparks flew up and landed on his bare arms, but the pain only fired his blows on.

_Clang!_

Not steel, but the elves who had taken Orcrist from him.

_Clang!_

Cursed elvish sword! Let the elves have it--the King under the Mountain would have a dwarvish weapon, forged by a dwarf!

_Clang!_

The metal was too cool to work now; he stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow with a sooty forearm and picked up the blade to put it back in the furnace.

As he looked up, he saw Bilbo Baggins standing in the door of the forge, staring at him.

"What do you want?" he snapped, exhaustion and chagrin sharpening his voice. How long had the hobbit been standing there watching him batter mute metal into submission?

Bilbo blinked. "I, um--I mean, I--wait, wait," he stammered. He closed his eyes and screwed up his face in intense concentration, then blurted out, "Balin wanted me to give you a message. He said I'd find you at the forearms--I mean forge! Yes, at the forge." He opened his eyes once more and smiled weakly at Thorin. "And here you are!"

Thorin waited a moment, leaning on his hammer, but Bilbo seemed disinclined to continue. "And the message?" Thorin finally growled.

"Message?"

"From Balin?"

"Balin?"

Thorin narrowed his eyes and waited, reminding himself that the hobbit had been ill recently and one must be patient with invalids. Eventually Bilbo snapped his fingers. "Ah, yes! Balin wanted to know if you were done with Kili's arrowheads."

Thorin picked up a bag that clinked and handed it to Bilbo. "There they are. Now, the iron is hot and so I must get back to work."

He pulled the sword out of the furnace once more and laid it on the anvil, lifting his hammer. As it fell he realized Bilbo hadn't left, but was still watching him, and his stroke fell with an awkward _clonk_. Frowning, he ignored Bilbo and focused on his work, but it turned out to be difficult to summon a righteous princely rage while being watched by a hobbit in suspenders. Instead he felt merely sweaty, sooty, and increasingly annoyed. But he grimly hammered out the metal until it was cool before putting the rough blade aside and growling, "What more do you need?"

"Ah, yes," said Bilbo, rummaging through his little pack. "Balin also asked me to bring you this." He held up a small flask. "He said you might have need of refreshment."

Thorin cleared his throat in a way that could probably be taken for regal irritation to mask his gratitude. Balin was always looking out for him. "Give him my thanks," he said, reaching for the flask, but Bilbo shook his head.

"He said I was to share it with you and then bring him the flask back. For cleaning."

This time the sound Thorin made was more legitimately annoyed. He might have to have a talk with Balin, who seemed to have picked up the odd idea that spending time with the hobbit was somehow _good for_ Thorin. But for now...

"Very well." He grabbed a cloth and tried to scrub the worst of the soot off of his face and arms, with middling success. "A small break would not be amiss."

They left the blazing confines of the forge and walked along the edge of the lake (for fear of fire, the Laketown forge was built on the shore, away from the town), handing the flask back and forth.

"What is it you were working on, back there?" Bilbo asked after a while.

"You may have missed, perhaps, that the Elvenking took both of my weapons. Perhaps swords are not something that concern hobbits greatly."

"Well," huffed Bilbo, "I'm sorry I was too busy getting your men and their weapons and you to safety to go hunting for your pointy metal sticks while I was at it."

Thorin growled deep in his throat. "It would be churlish of me to hold it against you," he said. "I traded my labor to the Laketown forge," he went on quickly as Bilbo opened his mouth again. "In return for three days of my smithing-work, they would give me the material for a new sword and the use of their forge."

Bilbo looked down at his toes, dug into the pebbles of the beach. "It must be hard for you," he said, with a sympathy in his tone that made Thorin suspect some of the other dwarves had been telling him tales of his time in the Blue Mountains.

Thorin shrugged. "I am used to it. Besides, this is the last time I shall ever have to do it." He looked across the lake to where Erebor waited, its slopes painted with the afternoon sun. "One way or another," he added softly.

After a silence, Bilbo said, "I'm sorry the elves took Orcrist from you."

"I'm not," snapped Thorin. "A false blade, made by a false folk. When I retake Erebor, it will be with a dwarvish sword in my hand, and when I die, I shall not be holding a weapon of the enemy."

"You talk so easily about dying," Bilbo said, and there was something in his voice that made Thorin stop thinking about Orcrist and look at him. "Are you truly so--" He broke off and seemed to choose a different word, "--so willing to die?"

"I have been dead since I lost Erebor," Thorin said, and heard ashes and smoke in his voice.

Bilbo glared at him, and Thorin realized that the strange undercurrent in his voice had been anger. "That's--that's--" he sputtered, "If you'll pardon the crudeness, that's bull...um...droppings." The primness in his voice didn't reach his eyes. "Did it ever occur to you that if you hadn't gone charging off like a lunatic to fight Azog, the eagles would have saved us _without_ you getting chewed on by a warg? What did you accomplish?"

"My honor--"

"--oh, your _honor_ ," Bilbo cut him off. "I don't give a damn about your honor when it just means a death wish. I saw their faces as you walked to meet Azog: Balin's, and Kili's, and Fili's, and all of them. I heard their voices." His own was shaking, and his next words were nearly a cry: "Do you care not at all that there are people who cannot bear the thought of your death?"

He stopped abruptly and swallowed hard, looking away from Thorin, and Thorin could find no words, either gruff or gentle, to say.

After a while, Bilbo shrugged, scuffing one bare foot in the wet sand. "I don't know," he muttered. "I don't know what to say. You talk about honor like it's a shield against everything that could hurt you. Like losing Orcrist. I mean, who wouldn't be sad at losing Orcrist? It was an amazing blade. I don't--obviously, I don't know anything about swords," he said, ignoring Thorin's snort of agreement. "But it seemed just right for you. It was...really well-balanced."

Thorin couldn't suppress a surge of indignation at the feeble praise. Well-balanced? Orcrist had been like a feather in his hands, perfectly poised, responsive to his every motion, nearly his every thought.

"And it was so pretty," Bilbo said wistfully.

The pure silver sweep of it, a grace that made the heart ache to see it.

"It was incredibly sharp."

Its edge a moonbeam that could cleave the wind itself.

"When you held it, it seemed to belong there."

The warmth of its hilt in his hand, the ivory like a living thing, awaiting his command. Like his soul itself, given the form of a silver light.

"It was beautiful, and you loved it."

At Bilbo's last words, Thorin's heart twisted unbearably, and he seized the emotion and forced it into anger. "It is lost forever, and it was never mine to wield," he snarled. "Never speak to me of it again."

He whirled and walked back to the forge, leaving Bilbo Baggins on the beach looking after him.

**: : :**

In the forge of Laketown, Thorin Oakenshield is making his new blade. His hammer strikes true, over and over, with no respite and no pause. Salt stings his eyes, but he ignores it, lets it run down his face unheeded. A King must have a sword.

His new sword will be a good blade, solid and true, a weapon for war. It will never hurt him with its beauty, never be taken from him, never shatter him with its loss.

Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, brings his hammer down as if to strike his own traitorous, splintered heart.

He will reforge it: free of fear, free of doubt, free of flaws.


End file.
